Identity thieves skim credit cards stolen from gym lockers

Posted by Caitlin on September 9th, 2009

Our identity theft guest expert, Robert Siciliano, is quite vigilant in his attempts to keep readers informed about the dangers of ATM skimming, as well as other scams that can lead to identity theft. When you think of skimming, the first thing that comes to mind may be an ATM that has been tampered with, but as Robert Siciliano pointed out in his most recent post, there are other ways for thieves to skim data from your credit card, such as when you hand it over to a store clerk to make a purchase.

Last week, two Colorado men and one woman were convicted of a number of financial crimes, including identity theft and racketeering. They stole credit cards from gym lockers at a number of different gyms, skimmed the credit card numbers from the stolen cards, and then loaded the stolen numbers onto old credit cards, which they used to make purchases at various stores, including Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Toys-R-Us. They also used the credit card skimmer to steal credit card numbers from customers at a local Taco Bell. While this particular scam has come to an end, it's worth noting the ease with which these criminals were able to skim credit card numbers without their victims' knowledge.

As we've said many times at NextAdvisor.com, one of the best ways to protect yourself from this type of scam is to check your bank and credit card statements often, and to refute any unauthorized charges within 60 days. You should also consider investing in identity theft protection, which will help prevent and detect new account fraud.